Productive, Not Busy: How to Slow Down,
Clarify What Matters, and Calmly Get Things Done

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #563: Productive, Not Busy: How to Slow Down, Clarify What Matters, and Calmly Get Things Done

Jeff Sanders
If I bumped into you today and asked, "How are you doing?"

and you responded by saying, "Busy!"

you would fall right in line with just about everyone.

Because being busy is the new normal or it's been the new normal for a long time and it shouldn't be.

There is a better state of being.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 563.

Active, not busy.

How to slow down and clarify what matters to calmly get things done.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I'll break down why being busy is never what we truly want it to be, how to simplify your life to directly tackle the stress and overwhelm you likely feel on most days, and how to shift into a state of calm productivity.

Let's get to it.

We all know how to be busy.

But do we know how to be productive?

I was on a sales call recently for a speaking engagement and the client was describing a big event they were hosting where they wanted to provide training that would impact everyone in the company.

So they wanted a unified message that would reach every employee no matter their role.

And in a matter of minutes, we landed on this topic.

All of their employees felt busy.

They all craved a future where they were able to get things done without feeling like they were doing everything at once and just putting out fires.

Now this was not just specific to this particular company or their team or their industry or a season of the year.

Like you could make a lot of caveats as to why this conversation went that direction around being too busy.

However, this is not a one-off situation.

This is the norm.

Busyness is universal and it's the wrong approach.

And we all know it.

We're all looking for answers on how to overcome it, get around it, bust through it, destroy it, avoid it at all costs.

We all know that busyness ultimately is not the actual end goal we want.

We want peace.

We want to feel calm and confident.

Yes, ambitious.

Yes, goal achieving.

Yes, to all the big objectives in our lives.

But there has to be a way to approach those without feeling as though we're going to burn ourselves out in the process.

You and I both know this feeling.

We know what it feels like to run through our schedules and to-do lists without actually breathing.

And this lifestyle is counterproductive.

This busyness does not lead to the results we want.

Honestly, it just results in more busyness, more stress, more anxiety, more overwhelm, more chaos.

This episode this week is going live right at the top of the new year. 2025 is here.

And this message is the message that I want to drive home for this year, to kick this year off the right way, is that we want to acknowledge the stress, acknowledge the anxiety, acknowledge the busyness.

We can definitely have that perspective of honesty about our lives, of authenticity and awareness of what's true.

But then the pivot kicks in.

Then the opportunity shows up to actually do things differently, to make this year better than last year because we're not just going to fall into that trap again and again and again.

You know, one thing I've heard for a long time when it comes to goal achievements and New Year's resolutions and this entire perspective on change is that setting a big goal or a long-term objective is actually the wrong approach.

That if you want to change your life, you don't change what you're going to do.

You change what you do, literally every single day.

It's the habits that form who we are and how we experience our day.

And that if anything could change our actual lives, if a year from now we look back and say, "Something shifted here and here's what it was," and we could point to it and say, "This is why my last 12 months have been better than any other 12 months before it."

It's going to come down to habits.

It's going to come down to the fact that we live each and every day a little bit smarter, a little bit better, a little more in tune to the lives we want to lead without just simply saying, "Here's a grandiose goal down the road that I'll get to when things slow down," because we all know that day is probably not going to come any time soon if it's ever there at all.

So I'm not here to be the doomsday prepper and say the sky is falling and that we're all doomed and that stress is inevitable and it's always going to be that way.

In fact, I believe that we actually have a lot more control than we believe we do on our daily habits, our daily actions, our daily decisions.

And I emphasize daily because that's what this is.

Success is not a finish line.

It's not a thing we achieve.

It's a thing we strive for each and every day.

And so if you've had a season of your life that was less stressful, that was more calm and more productive, great.

But you may not be in that season now and you may want to repeat a season like that soon.

And to do so is going to require a decision to get back to it each and every day to re-decide that that's the life you want.

Each and every morning another decision to be made.

Will today be a day that I'm going to love?

And you get to choose that.

The power of choice is with you to decide whether you'll let the stress run your life or not.

Whether you'll let the busyness be your default state or not.

Whether you wake up reactively to all the chaos that could exist for you or you wake up proactively.

So the 5am miracle message is about a time of day.

Of course, waking up early is wonderful.

But waking up on purpose is the point, right?

The miracle is to say, I made an intentional decision. 5am is arbitrary, but the message behind it is not.

We get to choose how to live each and every day.

We get to decide not just the time of day to wake up, but the emotional state we could be in when we do.

The choice to have certain morning habits and activities that will mold us into the person we want to become for that day.

Some of your best and most important habits will be happening from the second you wake up.

The second you crawl out of bed or lay around and snooze for a while.

But those few moments matter a ton because they get to dictate how the day starts, what the intentionality says about what you want for your day to be true.

And you get to make those things true.

So from that perspective, to have this phenomenal year we want to have, to be productive and not busy, to slow down, to clarify what matters, to calmly get things done, let's dig into this a little more, especially from the angle of simplicity.

Because simplicity is the antidote to busyness.

Simplicity is the antidote to stress and overwhelm and chaos.

Overwhelm, by the way, is just simply trying to do too much in a small time frame.

You don't have overwhelm when you have very little to do.

When your schedule is fairly open and flexible, you don't feel overwhelmed in most cases, unless you brought it on yourself.

But your schedule wouldn't dictate that.

We feel that emotional state sometimes regardless.

We train ourselves to feel that sense of there's always more to do.

There's always another thing on the list.

And one of the biggest downsides to David Allen's getting things done system, even though I love his system, I've used it for 15, 20 years now.

One of the biggest downsides to it is the potential to always feel as though you're never done in a way that actually is destructive, in a way that's counterproductive.

I love lists and I love the GTD methodology around having lots of lists for every possible scenario in the world.

And I've got all kinds of organizational systems for all kinds of projects.

But the one thing that makes me feel the most pulled together, the one thing that makes me feel as though I've got my stuff in line is when I have less going on.

And by less, I don't mean I have no projects.

What I mean is I'll have one primary objective.

And the rest of my life is just going to be on hold while I just give myself over to the simplistic direction that I have decided upon in advance.

So let's break down how to make that kind of lifestyle actually possible.

And let's begin with a discussion on busyness itself.

Being busy is never truly what we want it to be.

We think we want a life filled with amazing things.

But the reality is that we usually hate it when that happens because it exhausts us.

We get depleted of our energy and we get set out for more busy days in the future.

We think we want busyness, but we don't.

This is my very subjective opinion here, but this just seems to be true more and more.

And what is true less and less is that we're living the lives we want to live because we believe what essentially are lies or we have false impressions about how we truly experience our lives.

So if we want our lives to be filled with amazing things, we don't actually have to overfill our lives for our lives to be full.

We don't have to have too much in order to have enough.

Being busy is the wrong goal.

The goal is to spend time on a few things that matter most and not on everything that might matter.

And this is such a trap.

This is such a conversation starter here because we have this false impression that everything is important.

And because of that, we believe that everything has the potential to be the next amazing thing in our lives.

And so we try to do it all.

We try to fill our lives with all the things that could be amazing as opposed to the few things that truly are.

And generally speaking, there's no perfect answer here.

We're not going to find like the one thing that is it.

We're going to find a few things that meet the mark.

A few things we can just devote ourselves to that really bring us fulfillment and happiness.

And in the process, find a way to not feel like we missed the mark, to not emotionally feel like we made the wrong decisions on which goals to say yes to and which ones to say no to.

These are gut feelings, right?

These are like an intuition.

You know yourself well, you have that awareness.

No one else can choose these goals for you personally, professionally, career path, family, where you live in the world, go to grad school or not learn a language or not.

All these things are your choice.

But to know what's best for you and what's not is your challenge for you.

It's my challenge for me.

We as individuals have to choose the lives we want.

And if our tendency in that pursuit is to keep saying yes over and over and over, well, that's the stress and overwhelming burnout and fatigue.

That's where that leads.

Saying yes to a few things and going deep on those few things.

That's where the fulfillment lies.

For a long time on this podcast, I've discussed how when I approach fitness, I don't swim, I don't cycle, I'm not out playing volleyball.

These are all great activities, but I don't do those.

I have chosen a few things that I love to do and I do those a lot.

So I run, I hike, I lift weights, I use the sauna.

That's it.

And I draw a line right there and say, these are my activities.

And the other things I might do for fun on occasion, but they're not going to be built into my lifestyle as an ongoing pursuit.

So in this one example here with health and fitness, I can choose the things that matter and I can say the rest of it, though good and has lots of potential, is not part of my story.

At least not in this season.

There could be a season of change in the future.

Maybe I'll pursue a triathlon or something.

I doubt it.

It's possible.

But the reality is, is I know me and I know what I am best at.

I know what I enjoy.

I know what I have time for, practically speaking on my calendar.

And so when you have these few pieces together, here's what I enjoy.

Here's what I have time for.

Here's what brings me fulfillment.

Here's what I could really double down on and get good at.

Well, the answers begin to show up.

You know, the potential to be overwhelmed by that choice is there, right?

I can make a huge list of all the different physical activities I could do to be in good physical shape.

And that list is very, very long, but I'm not going to do 98% of it.

I'm just going to do a few things and that's it.

So for your career, for your family, for your personal goals, your professional goals, it's the same conversation.

The list of things we could do is exponential, potentially endless.

We have to make choices and it's the choices that define whether we experience that emotional stress and burnout or not.

And the choice to then choose the opposite of I've made this decision.

These are the few things I can go deep into those things.

And man, there's the value.

And now I can feel in sync with my life because there's something that I've truly decided upon.

And to decide something means to say no to everything else.

And this is where we get so emotionally caught up because back to my point, we think it's all important and it can't be.

It's logistically impossible.

We do not have time for it all.

Yes, we can choose anything, but we cannot choose everything.

So the ultimate goal here is simplicity.

And let's break that one down.

I have five steps here to simplify your life, to directly tackle the stress and overwhelm that you likely feel on most days.

Step one is to cut.

I love this step.

I do this step all the time.

Cutting is my number one activity.

Every single day I cut activities.

I cut out tasks.

I cut out trash out of my house.

I'm always removing things, trying to get rid of distractions, get rid of ideas, get rid of things that hold me back from the few things that matter.

So your initial objective in anything personally, professionally, whatever it is, is to cut first, remove all the things that are not urgent and important.

Now there is a caveat to this step.

And the caveat is that cutting things in and of itself is actually a very busy process.

It can make you feel very stressed out if you decide to go in full haul like I tend to do with everything I do in my life.

And so what you're trying to do here is as objectively and calmly as possible, recognize something that does not belong in your life, physically, digitally, whatever the case is, and just say, okay, no more of that.

And if every single day that process is always there, always saying no again and again, say no to a meeting, no to a request, no to your own ideas, no to some random pursuit, it will ultimately lead you back to the few things that you know should be a yes.

But once again, by saying yes to everything, cutting will be nearly impossible.

We stop saying yes at first, and then we cut as much as we can.

Step two is to clear the path.

In this step, we're going to identify distractions, problems, fires to put out, and complete these items as quickly as we can to free up time and space for more important projects.

This step also has a tendency to make us feel very busy.

So once again, take this slowly, but very intentionally and proactively.

Recently in my life, I've had a shift in projects and a shift in priorities, and this happens to me every few months as I change seasons.

And when the last one happened, I had this very clear sense of this step being the most important for me.

Clearing the path was everything, because I realized that in order for me to pursue the thing that I was after, I had to get rid of a bunch of other just obstacles that were in my way.

Projects I had said yes to before, events, meetings, other goals, things that were not organized very well.

I had a lot of stuff in the way between me and the goal that I wanted.

And so for me to devote myself to the next objective, I had to take time at first to just clear the path, both literally and metaphorically and digitally and in every way possible, identify distractions and problems and obstacles and either get them done, delay them, delegate them, delete them, just get rid of them as fast as possible.

And the amazing thing is, as this process started, I saw more opportunities to do more of that.

And then as that continued, I then could see a path clearing towards me and this new objective.

I could see myself getting closer and it was happening.

And this is a very important step for most projects.

I'll give a good example of this in a very small practical daily sense.

Let's imagine your goal is to cook dinner, but your kitchen is a mess and there's dirty dishes everywhere.

There's a laundry piled up somewhere.

There's just all this stuff everywhere.

Your kitchen is just a disaster.

It is really hard to cook dinner in a messy kitchen.

I have tried and I don't do it anymore.

And so every single night, this is no joke.

Every single evening before I make dinner, I clean the kitchen, not a full clean, but a pickup, right?

Finding all the things that are a mess and I get rid of them.

Dirty dishes, laundry, random things that just landed there.

My girls and my wife and I, we are all messy on some level.

And so there's just stuff there, but the stuff is in the way between me and cooking dinner.

So it's got to go.

The distractions, the problems, the obstacles, they've got to go.

And then when they do, well now making dinner is easy.

Now I can put things on the counter.

Now I can chop vegetables and do whatever I need to do.

It's all right there.

So our goal is to figure out in our lives, what is the objective and what are these piles of dirty dishes that are in our way?

Step three is to slow down.

And I'll be the first to admit, this is where I struggle the most.

Okay?

So if you're in the same boat that I'm in, you love to get things done.

You love to be ambitious, drink coffee, wake up early, get things done.

Awesome.

Our biggest challenge as high achievers who are maybe the type A people who want to just be on the ball all the time, our biggest weakness is that we cannot really see what life looks like when we slow down.

The way that I tend to view it is that I'm either fully on or fully off.

I'm either engaged a hundred percent or I'm taking a nap.

Like it's just the exact opposite.

However, there are many moments in life where I can actually operate at a slower pace and still get things done and be calm and not stressed out and actually have it work well and this sustainable and repeatable.

It's an incredible process.

It's something that others experienced that I rarely do, but when I do, it works.

And the best thing about these moments in my life, maybe mid afternoon, let's say I finish lunch, make a green tea, and then I work on an afternoon task.

Every single day, my afternoons are my slowest time period.

And so it's in those moments that I can really reflect on the day, reflect on the morning hours, reflect on my emotional state, my physical state, my goals for the next day.

My afternoon is a chance to really take a small break in the day.

And that slightly slower pace provides a lot of awareness, a lot of chances to really say, wait a minute, this morning was too hectic.

Tomorrow could be better.

Or this morning was fantastic.

Let's repeat that again tomorrow.

Look, we have the chance to reflect all the time and slowing down is the only way to do that.

Slowing down means allowing plenty of time to complete a task.

It means building in margin around every task, every meeting and every event on your calendar.

My second book, The Free Time Formula, talks about this concept as the primary driver of what it means to have a counter argument to being too busy.

My first book, The 5am Miracle, which is what this podcast here is all about, is an ambitious, aggressive approach to getting things done and has a lot of value.

There's also a tendency to do too much and need to slow down.

And when I discuss this concept of slowing down, I can't help but think about the season of my life where I directly burned myself out, where I literally had panic attacks, where I literally went to the ER because I thought that a heart attack was about to kill me.

These are real things that happened to me and I just, I can't help but think about the tendency for someone like me to lean in that direction, to make decisions on a daily basis that in the moment, they feel effective, they feel productive, they feel good in most cases.

Or I feel compelled to work at an aggressive pace because I have obligations, responsibilities, a long to-do list, I have deadlines to hit.

But if you just live in that very tiny space, that really tight focus on what your life is right here, right now, we miss the chance to step back.

We miss the chance to really say, "Wait a minute.

This isn't the right approach.

I can be more strategic here.

I can see the bigger picture here and I don't want to see myself going down the same path I did before.

I don't want to see myself having panic attacks.

I don't want to see myself being stressed out.

I don't want to see myself regretting these decisions."

On the one hand, being productive is productive.

It's good.

We got things done.

We checked boxes and that's wonderful and that could push us towards our goals.

But on the other hand, if we are emotionally drained because of it, if we are exhausted because of it, is it worth it?

Is the productivity worth that?

I don't know.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but I get this feeling pretty frequently, especially on my busiest days.

I'm doing it wrong.

I'm doing this daily stress-induced chaotic runaround wrong because that's not the point.

I'm not trying to be ambitious so I feel like that.

I'm not trying to get big goals done just for a pat on the back or a resume booster.

We really have to ask ourselves, "What are we doing?

More importantly, why?

How did we get ourselves here?

Is it just a trap of just busyness leads to more busyness?

Is it an addiction to being busy and checking boxes?"

Again, that endorphin rush of being able to brag about yourself, even just to yourself, about your own productivity.

I don't think that's it.

I'm not going to claim to have the answers to all of this.

These are big life questions.

But we have to ask those questions fairly often to reset, to get back to what matters.

And that's what the reflection provides is a chance to ask those questions.

Let's imagine you have a very busy season.

A busy season can be great or it can be incredibly destructive or both.

It could be a lot of things.

And so the goal of the reflection is to analyze what it is and what that means to you.

And then with that, decide what should my future include?

Is it more of that or less?

Do I like being busy or is it just burning me out?

I know in recent years, especially as a dad who has two young girls, that the biggest shift for me in the last six years since my first daughter was born is that the busyness angle doesn't work for me anymore.

I can unequivocally state that that just simply the act of doing a lot is no longer fulfilling.

No longer is an objective I'm shooting for.

There's a reason why that I harp on this show over and over again about this idea of slowing down and being calm is because I'm dying for it.

I really, really want more of it.

Sometimes I get it.

Sometimes I don't, but I'm very aware that that's the objective.

I'm very aware that when I craft my calendar for the week, that when I look at my daily to-do list, I don't want to feel like there's too much to do, that there's more to do than I have time for.

And if that's true, it's on me to shuffle things around.

It's on me to reschedule, decline invitations.

I just declined one this morning that I was really excited about going to actually, but I had to say no to it.

I knew I had to say no to it because it was just the wrong decision right now.

And so there's going to be times like that too, where you have to decline something and you emotionally feel bad about it.

Guilt, shame, whatever the case may be.

But that's the question we have to ask.

Is this the right call for me right now?

And if not, what is the right call right now for me?

And this is kind of a self-centered perspective, but it's also one about self-care.

It's about being able to sustainably and repeatedly show up again and again for those we love, for our work, for everything we're out to achieve.

We can't show up again tomorrow as our best selves if today we burned ourselves out.

It can't happen.

It won't happen.

So what do you need to do today to make tomorrow better?

How can today shift so your future is brighter and has more opportunity, more possibility, more energy, more ambition, more creativity, more curiosity.

I was at a holiday party just last night, uh, talking to a couple who are very like academic, very intelligent, very well read.

And one thing that I noticed about that conversation was just how insatiably curious the husband in this combo was.

Um, ironically, his name is also Jeff, but this guy literally just kept pegging me with questions.

And I realized, wait a minute, this guy is so curious.

He wants to know everything about my life in this moment right now.

And it was just this incredible sense of fulfilling energy that I got from the conversation.

And I realized in that moment, I don't have those as often as I would like to.

I don't have that insatiable curiosity.

If I'm tired, you can't be curious about fun things.

If you're just dying for a nap, it's just not going to happen.

The math doesn't work.

All that to say, slowing down is the point because that's what opens the door to the things that are the bigger, brighter futures.

Step four is to calmly lean in or what I call crunch.

So in this podcast, I've discussed for almost a decade now, uh, this concept of to crunch and release and the crunch is the work.

The crunch is when you lean in, you do the hard thing, you have your focus block of time and you are executing on your tasks.

And the release is exactly what just discussed releases, the slowing down release is the calm reflection.

And to have that yin and yang all the time, the back and forth of crunch and release of dig in and do the work and then take a big step back and have some strategy sessions.

That's the value.

So the question of when it's time to work, when you want to calmly lean in, when that focus block of time shows up, it's then we have the chance to be more intentional, to choose one single and important task, to choose a dedicated space, to go through a focus block of time checklist and get all your ducks in a row.

You give yourself a warmup period and then you go deep and you get yourself into that flow and you're doing the work and you stay there as long as you can, especially if you're in the zone, especially if you found a flow, that's where the best value of your day comes from.

That's where the true breakthroughs take place is in those moments where you found your flow.

And then when the time is up, we take a big step back and then that is over.

That session has ended.

But the fun part is doing this again and again, day after day to repeat this focus block of time crunch period of saying this valuable work session is what I'm all about.

I will commit my time to building up to this focus block of time.

I will dig in deep when it takes place and I will intentionally reflect afterwards to ask the question, first, how did it go?

And second, how can I do it again and do it better?

And if your life is filled with these types of focus blocks of time, what I have seen is that my life is slower, but not slower in the sense that it feels slower, slower in the sense that it doesn't feel fast.

Focus blocks of time and going deep provide the opportunity to feel fulfillment because you actually did something of value and you did it well.

Yes, there's great quantity, but there's also great quality and it's the quality that makes you feel good, not the quantity.

This is a big distinction that I didn't realize for a long time is that a long to-do list getting done doesn't make me feel better.

It doesn't.

Getting 35 things done today makes me tired versus doing one important thing and doing it really, really well.

That's fulfilling.

That's a day worth living and a day worth repeating.

The biggest challenge we all face is taking that 35 step checklist and making it one or two things.

How can your to-do list of dozens of items become super short?

If you can master that process, you will have mastered this challenge, which is honestly one of the most important challenges we all face, especially high achievers, especially those who are busy, those who are ambitious.

If you can turn a ginormous checklist into a tightly focused and deep focus block of time, you win.

That's it.

That's game over.

You've got it.

The challenge is there to make that possible and to repeat that again and again.

Step five, the final piece of this puzzle, is a very intentional release process that I would argue is actually separate from the slowing down component.

The slowing down step three we discussed earlier is really more about a daily pace of not trying to do too much too quickly.

It's a calmer approach to daily tasks.

The actual step back and release process is an intentional reflection that I generally refer to as a weekly review, monthly review, quarterly review, annual review.

These bigger reflective periods where being strategic is the point, or being able to really ask difficult questions and answer them is the point.

We're in that season right now.

This episode going live at the end of 24, beginning of 25, this is a big time shifting part of our year.

This is a great time to reflect.

If you have the opportunity to take a day, a couple of days, and just slow the roll, ask and answer, if you can, a few big questions, what you'll find are opportunities.

What you'll find are ideas.

Then you'll get curious, and you'll be creative, and you'll see answers you didn't see before.

You will consider possibilities that before sounded a bit foolish, or a bit ambitious, or a bit out of touch, but all of a sudden, they become real.

You allow yourself to go there mentally, philosophically.

What if?

Asking what if questions and how could I questions, those two will lead you to more breakthroughs than most.

What if, and how could I?

You start with those two questions, and you will begin to see your life open up very quickly, especially in a season where things are tough, especially in a season where maybe you have a lot of fear, or anxiety, or regret.

If you're going through a tough season right now, being able to dig yourself out of that is going to be the most important thing you could possibly do, and you do that by having hope.

You do that by seeing a better future ahead, and you can see those better futures by asking the right kinds of questions to basically shift your thinking from one of rumination on the bad, and instead, creativity for the possibilities of the good.

That shift can pull you out of a difficult season faster than most things.

Of course, paired with exercise and great therapy, these things can really help you get to where you're trying to go.

And so, if you're in a season of potential, or looking forward to a bigger and better year, well, what does a better year look like?

Let's map it out.

Let's write it down.

Let's literally blueprint our way to what this future could hold.

That's going to lead to the breakthroughs you need to see it tangibly, and then literally create a plan to make it happen.

That's goal achievement.

That's possibility thinking.

That is abundance thinking.

That is new year possibility thinking.

And that's going to happen in a season where this is, once again, the big message here, to slow down, to be able to reflect, to slow down, to be able to see these things, but not in a season where you're just trying to do another thing.

Because that's not where our creativity comes from.

Cortisol and stress in our brains stops our ability to be creative.

It stops our ability to think in a way that leads to breakthroughs.

So, if you're stressed, your only objective is to de-stress.

But then once you're de-stressed, and you calm down, well, then we get to shift into creative thinking.

Then the possibilities are everywhere.

So I want to wrap this up with a quick discussion on what it means to experience calm productivity, especially if you are stressed out right now.

I want to help you fight that stress and actually enter into a season of being productive in a calm manner.

And there are a few quick steps to do.

Number one is just stop working on whatever you're doing right now.

For the sake of argument, let's just assume that what you're doing isn't working, and you're stressed because of it.

So our first objective is just stop.

Let that go.

Pause.

Now, unless you have to do the very next thing you're doing, let's just not do it.

Step two, take a walk.

Get outside and begin to reflect right away.

One of the very best things you can do for yourself in a season of stress is walking.

And I literally mean walking.

Not running, not trying to be super aggressive.

A hike or a walk, that'll get the job done.

It's incredible what that will do to help you kind of untangle the mental and emotional cobwebs in your life and be able to reflect and then come back with a new sense of energy and creativity and actually have those aha moments of, "Wait a minute.

I've got a new idea.

I've got a new approach."

And that's going to come from first we stop the madness and then take a walk.

Just go outside. 20 minutes, two hours, doesn't matter.

Just get out and move your body for a while because it will begin to shift your mental and emotional states immediately.

And then step three is to reprioritize your task list for the day.

And you begin by removing, once again, cutting anything that's not absolutely essential.

If it's not due today, don't do it.

This is going to change your life more than anything else.

If it's not due today, do not do it.

If it's a meeting you can cancel, it is a task and reschedule, reschedule it.

Whatever it is, don't do it.

If you're overwhelmed, this is your very first and most important thing to do because this gives you such a breath of fresh air, literally from walking, but also metaphorically from that sense of your calendar and your to-do list just got shorter and easier because all the nonsense got removed.

All the filler and the junk and the optional activities and the things we thought were important but actually weren't.

Those things were just either delayed or removed completely because not everything on your list is due today.

I promise you that.

Your list can and should be shorter than it is right now.

And then of the few things that are actually due today, organize your list into what matters most first and then down the line from there.

Now, if you have to intentionally skip something that's due today in order to actually breathe so you can work tomorrow, this is going to be a big deal.

Those who are most overwhelmed, most stressed out, most on the brink of a burnout, making cuts is going to save you.

It won't necessarily work against you because it will save you from an emotional breakdown that will make everything else worse.

And so the goal here is to prioritize and focus.

And we can't do that if there's too much on the list.

And the very final step is once you have this very short list of the few things that are due, we do one thing at a time.

The first thing on the list gets our full attention.

A full focus block, we dig in, we do it, and then we pause and take a breath.

And then do it again.

And again, and again, and again.

Crunch and release.

Focus and execute, big step back.

Do the work, don't do anything.

That's it.

That's the process.

The crunch and release, we fight the overwhelm and then we take a break, we tackle the task with intentionality, and then we just chill out.

This back and forth is what life is.

The problem is that most of us don't acknowledge the fact that there are two things here.

We just think of life as a bunch of things to do.

And that's it.

We stop there.

If you only live in that first zone, if you never get the release, you never get the break, a break will be forced upon you.

That's the bottom line.

Panic attacks, trips to the ER, those types of things will show up.

Your body will force you into a break and we don't want to go there.

So let's be intentional.

Let's be aspirational for the new year.

Let's have some new possibilities on our list, but let's do so with a new lens, a new focus.

One that is aligned to not just our highest priorities, but to sustainable, repeatable, and ambitious as well, goals and lifestyles that actually work.

That's the objective.

So I hope this works for you.

I hope this makes sense for you.

I hope you're excited for your new year.

Let me know what you're up to.

Email me, jeff at jeffsanders.com.

I would love to hear what your big ambitious goals are for the new year.

I of course, in this same season, you are looking forward to the new year, trying to map out my own life.

So share with me what you're doing.

I would love to hear about it.

And for that action step this week, cut as much as you can everywhere and then cut some more.

You know, the first and best place to begin in the world of productivity and getting things done is always in the center of simplicity and nothing allows simplicity to thrive more than removing the things that do not have to be there.

So no matter how busy you are right now, cut stuff.

No matter how overwhelmed you feel right now, cut stuff.

When in doubt, cut, cancel, remove, postpone, delay, delegate, and free yourself from the burden of believing that you have to do it all because you absolutely don't.

Now, of course, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by going to 5ammiraclepremium.com.

You can get ad free versions of this podcast and exclusive bonus content.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and all that fun begins bright and early.

---

© 5 AM Miracle Media, LLC